Monsters and all the troubles that come with them are the bane of some of the best games and stories. Heroes come from far and wide to vanquish these foes, often at the cost of their lives for the promise of fortune and fame. Today we are going to join a group looking to do just that as we bring our Guilds to the kingdom to see what the challenge will hold!
Kingswood is designed by Henry Audubon with art by Tristam Rossin. It plays 1-5 players in 15-45 minutes. It is published by 25th Century Games.
Overview
In Kingswood, players take on the role of a Guild as they attempt to rid the forest of monsters to earn fame and glory for themselves!
The game comes with common and special location tiles, monster cards, multiple tokens, 3 Adventurer meeples and a King’s Guard meeple.
Gameplay
The location tiles are set up in a circle, adding one special location to the common ones. The Adventure meeples are place not heir starting spots and the tokens are placed in piles near the play area.
The deck of Monster cards is prepared with Chapter 1 on top of the Chapter 2 Monsters. Each player is also given a Guild card and the tokens that match the card to start.
The game will go until a player reaches 20 Fame and play then continues for each player to have equal turns. Fame is gained through defeating monsters with resources. Whoever has the most Fame at the end of the game is the winner!
The resources in game are swords, spell books, hearts and coins. Coins are spent as money but the other resources are used as skills to defeat monsters. These are flipped over instead of lost like coins are in the game. Some locations allow them to be flipped back over later in the game.
On a player’s turn, they will chose to either Explore or Collect. These actions are played out as follows:
1-Explore. Here players will pick any of one other three Adventurer meeples and take the action of the location you start on if you’d like then move them to any number of spaces dependent on the coins you spend. Meeples can only be placed where there isn’t another token. The King’s guard meeple replaces the one you moved. You may then use the location where you go to.
2-Collect. Here players can remove the King’s Guard meeple from he board and collect 2 coins. This can only be done if he is somewhere on the board on your turn already.
The Locations are all different and give you a chance to take coins or pay coins to gain and refresh resources. Players who enter the Forest tile may fight any number of face-up Monsters here. These are placed in front of you for the immediate bonus or game-end bonus/scoring as well when you defeat them.
The end of the game is triggered when a player reaches 20 Fame points from the Monsters they have defeated. Play continues to allow all players to have equal turns. Add all bonus points along with their Fame to determine the score. Highest score wins!
Impressions
In this wonderful hobby of board gaming, there are a variety of different levels of difficulty when it comes to the games we play. There are light and easy games, there are heavy, crunchy hard games and there is a lot of space in the middle. Kingswood sits in a spot where a lot of games try to get to, the center of that chart. For hobby gamers with limited time and/or families I find we are often looking for a game that is easy to play and learn but still offers a challenge that will keep you engaged for the duration. This game does just that-it checks the boxes of easy to learn and play while still giving a gamer things to think about and consider. I could easily play this as a good starter game for a long game night, or a finishing game to wrap up an evening when we want to play “one more” but don’t want to play until 2 in the morning.
The art and design on this game is in-line with the other titles from 25th Century Games. They have been in the front of the pack on production, putting some serious effort into making their games shine. The game components are quality, everything from the cards and board to the details on the meeples. The art and graphic design also continues to be stellar like their other titles. I love the design of the monsters and the Guild leaders and how they pop off of the card.
Overall Kingswood is a game that you will enjoy with a wide variety of people, everyone from your basic gamers and new to the hobby friends, your younger game players and even seasoned gamers in your group. I would recommend this as a great addition to any gaming collection and look forward to getting a few more plays in at our table in the near future as well!
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